St Columb Minor () (Latin: Columba Minor Sancta) is a village on the north coast of Cornwall, England, United Kingdom.
St Columb alone by default refers to the nearby St Columb Major; both the town and the village are named after the 6th century saint Columba of Cornwall and have churches dedicated to her. The village of St Columb Minor dates back to the 11th century, however a settlement existed much earlier under the Manor of Rialton, it has now been encroached upon by its larger neighbour Newquay. Whilst the village is still an ecclesiastical parish, St Columb Minor is no longer a civil parish, forming part of Newquay.
Parish Church
The current church dates from the 15th Century.
The site of the Parish Church is probably a very ancient pagan site. Here, long before the St.Columba legend, came the first Celtic missionaries who exorcised evil spirits and they probably erected the first Christian Church which would have been a rough wooden building. The Church was replaced more than once, until in about 1100 A.D. a Norman Church was built. Its outline has been traced from the present chancel step to about the position of the font at the West end of the Church, with North and South walls exactly where the nave arches stand today. Part of the original Norman foundations can be seen at the base of the pillars.
In about the middle of the 12th century, another church was erected in place of the Norman one. This had aisles which terminated at the chancel. Nothing is known about the building of this church, except that it was referred to as a chapelry to the College of Crantock in 1283 By 1417, it had been reported that the chancel was in a ruinous state and the whole church needed rebuilding. By about 1430, the Nave arcades were reconstructed.
The present church consists of a chancel, nave, and north and south aisles. The arcades are of six arches each, the chancel arches being obtuse, and the nave arches are pointed. The tower arch is plain; there is a north door, a south porch (within it is the date 1669), and a priest's door. The Tower, which is the second highest in Cornwall, is 115 feet in height and was built in the 15th Century; originally it could have been seen from every point in the parish. It is battlemented and finished with pinnacles.
The church tower is the second highest in Cornwall.
The church has undergone two major restorations: once in 1795 and again in 1884.
History
The Village was first mentioned in 1283 when it was referred to as a chapelry to the collegiate church of Crantock; it was mentioned officially in 1284 as 'Sancta Columba Minor.'
In Celtic and Anglo-Saxon times Rialton (in which the village fell under) was the head manor of the Hundred of Pydar and belonged to the monks of St Petroc at Bodmin. The monastery remained in possession after the Norman Conquest and a manor house was built here by Prior Vivian (Thomas Vivian, titular Bishop of Megara) c. 1510. The manor passed to the Duchy of Cornwall in 1538 but some of the manor house remains.
St Columb Minor was a large growing village when Newquay (Towan) was just a small fishing village with a clusters of cottages and farmland. The population of St Columb Minor in 1841 was 1,681 and only 489 of the people lived in Newquay.
The western end of the church and yard is in view of the Trevelgue clifftop twin tumuli, known locally as The Barrows. It is sheltered from the strong winds of the Atlantic and looks down the Rialton Valley and across to Castle-an-Dinas on the summit of Castle Downs. Local legend has it that the Celtic missionaries, centuries before the Columba legend arose, drove away the evil spirits and replaced pagan magic by Christian worship, and erected a wooden sanctuary. The church-town lay to the west and south while the shelving ground to the north and east prevented building. Hence, as in the case of so many villages, development in the 20th century extended further from the parish church, in this case towards Porth Bean and Henver Roads, leading into Newquay.
The oldest Cottages in the village are on Church Street. Honey-suckle cottage was a farmhouse in the early 17th century and the ships timbers from Porth were used in its construction.
As of 1896, there were a Cornish cross and four cross bases in the parish: the cross is at Cross Close and is unusual in being almost circular in section. The housing estate that was constructed in the 1950s now surround the cross. The Doublestiles Cross marks the ancient path to the village. Henver Road meaning 'the old road' that the cross was nearby is the main road into Newquay for a few hundred years.